Sub‐Saharan Africa: Jihads, Slave Trade and Early Colonialism in the Long Eighteenth Century

Abstract

AbstractThis study explores the meaning of the eighteenth century for sub‐Saharan African historiography. The period is understood as an extension of changes initiated with the collapse in 1591 of the West African Songhay empire and the presence of the Portuguese on the coast of West Central Africa at the end of the fifteenth century. The end of the long eighteenth century is delimited by the British occupation of Cape Colony, the end of the British slave trade and the jihads in central Sudan. This long eighteenth century is marked by the transatlantic slave trade and its effects on African societies.